Digest: Climate effects on chipmunk cranial morphology.

Abstract

The threat of rapid climate change raises questions not only about species’ survival and global biodiversity, but also about how climate impacts morphological evolution. Many studies have sought answers by studying climatic shifts in geologic history, and they have produced mixed results. Renaud et al. (2005), for example, showed how the drying and cooling climate between the late Miocene and Pliocene promoted the dental evolution of two genera of rodents, one a diet generalist and the other a specialist, from the same phylogenetic lineage. In contrast, both Alroy et al. (2000) and Faith and Behrensmeyer (2013) found little evidence that climate fluctuations directly promoted mammalian evolution. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved